Tuesday, 7 January 2020

Was the Remain campaign always doomed?

In hindsight it is
tempting to say that Remainers should have set their sights on
something close to a BINO type deal (UK remaining part of the Single
Market (SM) and Customs Union (CU)) rather than campaigning for
Remain, and some have already suggested that. Is that a reasonable
conclusion in the light of Remain’s defeat in December 2019?

“It seems odd
writing that Brexit is on its deathbed, in a coma but with no chance
of recovery, when a year ago the Remain cause seemed hopeless. The
thing everyone under estimated was the way Brexiters themselves would
effectively kill Brexit.”

The essential
problem was that a significant section of Conservative MPs (and
Farage) wanted no shared sovereignty with the EU (no ties to common
standards etc), while another part of the party didn’t like the
implications of this hard Brexit for UK business. So how did Brexit move from its
deathbed to become a certainty within just 7 months? What mistake did
I make, and could it have been foreseen?

I was right about
the prospects for Brexit under May. May was going nowhere because
there was no way to avoid a hard border in Northern Ireland with any
UK wide deal acceptable to the Brexiters, and both May, the DUP and
many Conservative MPs seemed adamant that a border in the Irish Sea
was not on. A lot of this was already apparent
to me a year and a half earlier.

It is easy to say
that a new Prime Minister made all the difference, but that isn’t
enough. In May I did write “A Conservative party committed to No
Deal is the only way the Tories have to neutralise Farage.” I could
have added that many Tory MPs would be unhappy with that, which is
why that path was not sufficient for Johnson.

What he did would
have been hard to anticipate in May. I think Johnson got there
through trial and error rather than having some master plan when he
was elected. He had to convince both Farage and the Brexiters that he
would go for no trade deal rather than anything that ties the UK to
the EU, yet convince everyone else that he really was going for a
deal. The way he achieved that was to agree to the EU’s original
proposal for a border in the Irish Sea, but also by committing not to
extend the transition period beyond a year.

The other key
ingredient was the devastating Conservative result in the European
elections. Not only did it ensure May’s departure, but it also
became clear to Tory MPs that they risked disaster at a General
Election if they didn’t get Brexit done. So they rejoiced when
Johnson got the deal that Johnson had said earlier
was something he couldn't possibly agree to. They didn’t ask questions when Johnson
refused to extend the transition period, even though they knew full
well no trade deal worth anything could be done with the EU within a
year when the UK didn’t want a level playing field.

Equally Brexiters
and subsequently Farage were persuaded that Johnson would stick to
his pledge for no extension of the transition period, because to
question it was to put Brexit at risk. Both sides heard what they wanted to hear from someone they knew was the least trustworthy politician in the UK. Now we have seen all this
happen it is easy to imagine it, but in the first half on 2019 you
would have been almost clairvoyant to see all that detail. As a
result, Remainers optimism at the time was not unjustified given the
information we had, and so compromises were less likely.

What you could have
done was be pessimistic at a more general level. Many hoped that
after the vote public opinion would gradually lose faith in Brexit,
but that happened only to a small degree. If you believe as I do that the Brexit vote was the product
of Brexit press propaganda coupled with BBC disinterest in informing
viewers about reality, then why would people change their mind? As a
result of solid Brexit support, the fate of the Conservative party
became linked to getting Brexit done, so the party had to find a way.

Of course Remain
could have won the General Election, and a failure by the
Conservatives to get an overall majority would have meant the end of
Brexit. Ironically Corbyn both created the conditions that allowed
Remain to be optimistic (Labour’s victorious defeat in 2017 and the
consequent DUP veto) but they also helped create the conditions for a
Conservative victory. Labour’s performance in 2017 changed the
Brexit political dynamic, but the last people to understand that were
the Labour leadership. I wrote
in January that Labour’s refusal to oppose Brexit is becoming a
historic error, and events in the first half of 2019 proved that was
correct. [1]

Johnson’s victory
did not just depend only on the Remain vote being split. During the
election period Labour clawed back a lot of the votes they had lost
to the LibDems, but the LibDem and Green vote was still 50% up on
2017 levels. Corbyn was very unpopular among many of the kind of
traditional Labour voters who had voted Leave: the media gave us two
more years of negative coverage of Labour, and Corbyn’s past was a
gift in that respect. But a detailed assessment of why Labour lost is
for another time.

There was another
sense that fence sitting by Labour did not help Remain. I noted above
that public opinions about Brexit did not change significantly after
the referendum vote, but we will never know if that was inevitable.
The way broadcast media work is to cover what the two main parties
say, even on an issue like Brexit. Corbyn’s stance after the vote
meant that Labour felt unable to attack Brexit rather than the
government’s handling of it.

There is a
counterfactual history where Labour MPs played things better (i.e
waited until the beginning of 2017) to provoke a leadership election,
Corbyn lost that vote and his successor campaigned against Brexit.
This gave Labour a poll bounce that dissuaded May from holding an
election, allowing Labour to campaign against Brexit for the next
three years. It might have not worked out that way, but we know for
certain Corbyn as leader did not work out.

To sum up, I don’t
think I and other Remainers were being unrealistic in aiming for a
Remain outcome. But I do think we have to be realistic about the next
five years. It is just possible that Brexit will lead to the next
five years being obviously terrible, and that public opinion will
move against the whole project. If that is the case opposition
parties, and particularly Labour, should not be afraid the join the
dots and make that case. More likely, however, is that things
continue as they have been over the last three years. Not good at
all, but not bad enough for anyone to change their beliefs about
Brexit.

If the lessons of
austerity and the last three years carry over, the more some talk up
impending disaster, the more poor performance will be portrayed as
the vindication of Brexit. The reality is that powerful forces have
imposed a policy on half the population that do not want it. It is
rare that we see a government implement a policy that all experts say
will do the UK serious economic and political harm, which is why
those overseas who are not on the extreme right or left think we are
utterly stupid.
At least those that have fought this policy all the way can hold our
heads up high and say we did all we could to stop it.

[1] There are some
who still insist that Labour’s eventual adoption of a People Vote
in all circumstances was a ‘suicide note’, but Labour’s policy
before then would have been much more disastrous. You may discount
the European elections, but polls both before and after that had
Labour around 25% and the LibDems touching 20%. Labour’s 2017
result had created the political dynamic of strengthening Remain,
creating a political vacuum that Labour didn’t fill so the LibDems
did. Labour would always have clawed back some of the voters who chose LibDem during the election period, but in the absence of a commitment to a Public Vote
their final percentage would have been well below the 32% they
actually achieved. That is because Leavers would not have come flocking to
them, because the lure of 'getting Brexit done' was too great.

8 comments:

The ERG and friends had been hankering for some sort of Brexit for 30 years. They finally cornered Cameron and got a referendum. What exactly Brexit was for or meant to do seemed then and still seems unclear. But the ERG's friends are very rich, own the media and pushed it hard. The BBC was cowed firstly because it is the State Broadcaster and is always accused of bias and secondly there seems no clear reason why Brexit was a good thing or a bad thing, Brexit was an unknown and could be dressed up as anything. Hard to pin the politicians down. Deliberately?

Then Labour was lumbered with Brexit because globalisation and declining industries had had a bad effect on Labour's fan base. What exactly Brexit would do to improve the lot of the Labour heartlands is still completely unclear. Labour was/is in a cleft stick, Brexit became the name of the game for reviving the UK economy but apart from Boris spaffing a bit of cash up north there is no clear way ahead.

Corbyn played into the Tory's hands by promoting Leave, the election became a Tory Leave or a Labour Leave. But Corbyn was easily painted as The Great Satan and took on the role admirably. So even in the UK south where most had voted Remain the only sane general election vote became Tory Leave.

One might consider why the ERG and friends thought Brexit was a 'good thing'. Getting rid of a few EU regs seems a very minor thing, the only credible advantage is the ability to take the UK labour force on a race to the bottom. Become the cheapest place to plant a call centre or a car battery plant.

As for the next 5 to 10 years, I think the Tories have got it made. They have it in their gift to manage expectations up or down to suit themselves and the world economy. I feel the better off parts of Western Europe will get a bit poorer under the same forces that drove Brexit. So the Tories will have an easy comparison. The EU could cut up rough but then they have already been painted as the evil empire. What's not to like......

What are the prospects of the UK adopting a Swiss-style EU policy (minus Schengen) in a few years' time, once the current wave of Brexiter euphoria has subsided? What I mean is, you have a country where for ideological reasons, an electorally powerful section of the population is vehemently opposed to *formal* membership of any EU-led institution, such as the EEA. But because this group is mostly driven by symbolism (whether it's 'Swiss neutrality' or 'Britain as a global power') rather than economic policy, the government can safely negotiate bespoke bilateral arrangements that come fairly close to SM+CU membership (minus the voting rights, of course). Compared to Switzerland, a UK government pursuing this approach has the additional advantage that its policy can't be sabotaged by poorly-conceived 'popular initiative' referendums along the way. From an informed perspective it's clearly inefficient, but like in Switzerland, it could become the most viable option in terms of medium-term electoral consensus.

Excellent analysis as ever. But I think there is another strong possibility. Johnson will declare victory on 31/1/20- "Brexit is delivered". A bare-bones trade agreement is agreed (not a full FTA of course- impossible in this time frame) but within that the standstill arrangements are de facto extended. Johnson then can claim he achieved a trade deal; delivered Brexit; had no economic negative impact; did not ask for an extension; and most importantly does not hit the newly Blue northern seats with negative economic impact from a No Deal Brexit. Of course, the situation with be Brexit In name Only; but only the hardest of the ERG will say this - and with an 80 seat majority, Johnson can ignore them. And also watch out for a pseudo-Churchillian speech following the Middle East crisis that 'this is not the time for trade change when our troops are in danger". And to be fair, as a result from the referendum being out politically whilst in economically may fairly reflect the referendum result. And is exactly the EU associate membership prescribed by the Brueghel group in Autumn 2016.

I don't think BINO is possible. If for example we get another wave of immigration from the east as the economy picks up and there is still have freedom of movement rights (a condition of single market membership), immigration will return as a political issue, empowering Farage et al. Johnson will then face the same intractable problem as Brown and Cameron.

The sticking point is still you cannot be in the customs union without accepting freedom of movement. Blair and Heseltine argued before the last election that the EU may have been able to show some flexibility on freedom of movement and this was the way to proceed. Unfortunately as part of his general lukewarm enthusiasm for the EU, Corbyn did not take this up. And outside the EU, the prospects of Britain achieving any such concession is remote.

Remain always had a massive hurdle to climb in a GE because more constituencies were majority leave than remain. That's just a reflection of the distribution of the remain vote across the country and our FPTP system. As you say, not that many people had changed their mind since 2016, so remain was always likely to lose at a GE once the Conservatives had nullified the Brexit Party and consolidated the leave vote.

Some fair enough points were made here, but there also needs to be some introspection. What mistakes did the establishment and Remain case make that allowed the referendum to happen in the first place and then be lost? What role did the establishment play during the Great Moderation in warning about globalisation and deindustrialisation being a double edged sword? How did the EU get embroiled into this narrative of immigration and 'taking back control'. Were the consequences of a rapidly expanding and UK absence of transitional controls EU properly discussed at the time decisions on these policies were being made? You can't blame everything on austerity and the financial crisis. Besides what ultimately set off the chain of events to deindustrialisation, financial crisis, Tory victory, austerity and Brexit in the first place?

Moreover, the biggest costs of Brexit are not social, environmental or economic, as important as these are. They relate to security, in particular our marginalisation in major geopolitical decisions and a larger dependence and exposure to the whims of the US. A weaker Europe is not the interest of any country that can be described as progressively democratic. But none of this has really been discussed.

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